Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

I will consider the motion of a rigid body with an interior cavity that is completely filled with a viscous fluid. The equilibria of the system will be characterized and their stability properties are analyzed. It will be shown that the fluid exerts a stabilizing effect, driving the system towards a state where it is moving as a rigid body with constant angular velocity. In addition, I will characterize the critical spaces for the governing evolution equation, and I will show how parabolic regularization in time-weighted spaces affords great flexibility in establishing regularity and stability properties for the system. The approach is based on the theory of Lp-Lq maximal regularity. (Joint work with G. Mazzone and J. Prüss).